Trump’s fixer was made to wait eight hours to meet Putin – it felt like a classic power play

Published

5 months ago

March 14, 2025

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Steve Witkoff didn’t stay long in the Russian capital.

According to footage posted of his motorcade leaving and returning to Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, he was here for little more than 12 hours.

And for most of that, it seems, he was left waiting.

Trump’s fixer leaves Moscow – peace talks latest

Mr Witkoff, a former property mogul who has become Donald Trump’s chief negotiator, and is often referred to as the president’s ‘fixer’, had been dispatched to Moscow to deliver the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire to Vladimir Putin.

His visit had been scheduled near the start of the week, following the US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia.

But after arriving around lunchtime on Thursday, he was left twiddling his thumbs for at least eight hours before being called into the Kremlin.

Mr Putin was apparently too busy meeting someone else – Belarusian leader Aleksander Lukashenko – for a hastily arranged state visit that had been announced the day before.

Was ally’s visit a classic Putin power play?

We don’t know for sure if the timing of Mr Lukashenko’s visit was deliberate, but it certainly didn’t feel like a coincidence.

Instead, it felt like a classic Putin power play.

The Kremlin leader doesn’t like to be backed into a corner and told what to do, especially on his own turf.

This felt like a message to the Americans – “I’m the boss, I set the schedule, and I’m not beholden to anyone”.

He did eventually grant Mr Witkoff that all-important face time, once night had fallen and behind closed-doors.

We don’t know how long they spoke for, nor the exact details of their discussion, but I think we can make a pretty good guess given Mr Putin’s comments earlier in the evening.

At a press conference alongside Mr Lukashenko, he made it abundantly clear that he’ll only sign up to a ceasefire if he gets something in return.

And it’s not just one thing he wants.

All Russia’s red lines remain

By the sounds of things, he still wants everything.

His comment regarding the “root causes” of the conflict suggests all of Russia’s red lines remain – no NATO membership for Ukraine, no NATO troops as peacekeepers, and for Russia to keep all the territory it has seized.

According to Russian media outlet Radio Mayak, Mr Putin’s meetings in the Kremlin finished at 1.30am.

Around half an hour later, Mr Witkoff was back at the airport – leaving Russia, it seems – not with Mr Putin’s agreement but with a list of demands.

It’s now up to Mr Trump to decide what to do next.

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

4 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

10 hours ago

August 10, 2025